Swindon or Arsenal? Opting for losers has proved a winner
Footage of 1969 League Cup final in a cinema in South Africa put me on path to supporting the Gunners – and my son has joined me on the journey At Highbury in the 1980s you could still walk in at 2:45 and pay £4 at the turnstiles Ian Allinson, who had scored twice in a 3-1 win, made us some tea 30 May 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport Donald McRae Ifell for Arsenal in the white-and-black world of apartheid, where television was banned as a tool of communist propaganda and the club of my dreams was 6,000 miles away and mostly invisible to me. So it feels fitting that a surreal love story that began for a small boy in South Africa in 1969 will reach a new peak tonight in eastern Europe. This 65-year-old Arsenal fan and his 25-year-old son, who is just as besotted by the Gunners, will be at the Champions League final in Budapest as we face the dazzling powerhouse of Paris Saint-Germain. It’s the final game of Arsenal’s tumultuous grind of a season and we are as exhausted as we are still euphori...